Some items that are not on this list that I had discussed in the forums are aero and tire changes for the three premier oval cars and a better transmission model.

We were not happy with how testing has gone with both of these updates and have decided to hold them off from this deployment. The truck, nationwide and COT aero and tire changes should hopefully be rolled out next week. The transmission model may take longer than that to be in a state we feel is ready for public use.

Release Notes for 2010.01.18.01 - 2010 Season 1

Web Site

- Added World Cup statistics pages for the RACC Runoffs, RACC Finals and World Cup Finals. These are all accessible from the “Stats” top level navigation bar item.

- Added restart configuration option to hosted sessions so you can select single file, double file with lapped cars on the inside or double file with lapped cars at the back.

- Drivers reconnecting to a server will now see previously shared group setups.

- remindbf.wav is added to TJ&L spotter pack.

- The sim can now recognize windows accelerator keys (volume up/down etc) as inputs in the sim. All keys are supported except Cut/Copy/Paste. This should stop the bug where volume keys would cycle the cameras.

- The right shift key is now recognized by the sim.

- Pressing a shift key now works in conjunction with keys on the num pad when num lock turned on without having to turn off num lock.

Custom Paint Jobs

- Custom car/helmet/suit paint jobs are now supported.

The filename for a paintjob is just the customer ID with a .tga extension. The sim will also accept it with leading 0’s to form a 6 digits number (which sorts better alphabetically). You can find your customer ID by going to the My Account section of the iRacing website.

For instance, for a driver who has a customer ID of 12345, their custom texture in any of the below directories would be

“12345.tga” or “012345.tga”

The custom texture files need to be placed into the documents\iRacing folder, like this:

The cars have to be 1024x1024 pixels in size. The suits and helmets must be 512x512. If they are the wrong size they are ignored.

If the sim can't find a custom texture, it will use the driver's defined colors and pattern from the website as usual.

A custom texture will be loaded and used even when loading older replays that were made before the custom texture was added or changed.

Custom textures are not automatically uploaded, downloaded, transferred, mailed, delivered, etc, in any way. Customers will have to put them up somewhere themselves, and others will have to download them themselves.

Cameras

- Added support for copy/paste of groups of cameras even across files. Pasting a group makes a new copy of all cameras in the group.

- All camera tool sliders now have edit boxes.

- Added a quick set button to adjust camera microphone gain based on current car position. Just click and hold while watching a replay and it will set all cameras you view to the same relative volume.

- Camera groups can now be reordered.

- The scenic camera no longer interferes with the default cameras when the focus car disappears from the view.

- Fixed mouse aim mode when in scenic mode.

- Does not save active camera group transitions to ini file when in scenic mode.

- Fixed bug that could reset active group if exiting sim while driving.

- Fixed chase views when focusing on pace car so that the camera no longer wiggles.

- No longer defaults to invalid camera group at load time.

- Group copy/paste properly grayed out when selecting a static group (on car cameras).

- Camtool only resets camera state when needed, volume etc should not cause camera to flash.

- Camtool updates more frequently when in slow motion.

- Statically aimed cameras as blimp, chopper, or chase cameras will now follow the motion of the camera and not just point north.

Replay

- The replay now back patches skid marks and smoke and dust to move them under the wheels.

Race Control

- Added a new type of double file restart where the lap down cars get pushed to the back of the field. Double file restarts will now be possible on road courses if set.

- Restart type is now selectable for Hosted races.

- During cautions the transition to double file should now occur at 2-to-go, except for road courses and ovals of 2 miles or longer which continue to transition at 1-to-go.- For the new double file starting mode, lapped cars get sent to the back at 2 To Go while staying single file, then at 1 To Go the pace field will switch to double file. Unless the track is an oval over 2 miles long or a road course, where the lapped cars will get sent to the back at the same time as the field switches to double file at 1 To Go.

- Don't apply jump start rule if a driver entered then exited the grid and then missed the start and is put into their pit stall.

- Cars that end a tow while a caution is in progress are now properly added to the pace field when leaving pit lane.

Controls

- You can now unassign non-driving controls by pressing Enter when the control assignment pop-up window says "unassigned" while waiting for you to give it a control. The 'Esc' key is still good for exiting the control assignment pop-up window without changing the current assignment.

- Each car can now have it's own set of controls assigned. There is a checkbox in the bottom left of the "Controls and Other Options" windows to tell the sim to use a custom controls.cfg for the car (the file is stored in the car setup dir), or to use the default global controls.cfg.

Cars / Physics

- Some improvements and fixes have been made to the collision system. In particular, the player car's chassis should interact far more correctly with the ground surface. Also of note is that curbs seem to be more drivable.

- Atmospheric conditions used by the physics are now responsive to altitude, instead of being sea level all the time. At higher altitude tracks there will be properly reduced engine power and aerodynamics effects.

- Engine power has been recalibrated to match dyno reference conditions, which results in a couple of percent more power when near sea level.

- Engine throttle response is reworked to more correctly match how real motors respond. There is now much more response at initial throttle and less response at full throttle, varying with engine RPM, versus the old mapping which had very little initial throttle response and a lot of response near full throttle and did not change with RPM.

- Engines will now create smoke when damaged.

Dallara

- A default Indianapolis setup is supplied.

- The issue where legitimate setups would fail tech inspection at sim load time is fixed.

- Bump stop adjustments have been removed. Bump stops are now fixed in place at the end of full travel.

- The aero calculator ride heights updated.

- A small tweak to the updated tire model on this car has been made that gives more grip loss when sliding at high speed.

Riley DP

- Chassis inertia in all 3 axes (roll, pitch, yaw) has been adjusted to match the numbers supplied by the Manufacturer. Very small changes were made to the wheel inertias, again due to additional data from the manufacturer. Engine inertia and the driveline inertias have been modified to more closely match real world behavior.

Corvette C6R

- Chassis inertia in all 3 axes (roll, pitch, yaw) has been adjusted slightly. Rear wheel inertia and engine, clutch and driveline inertias are subtly massaged based on new data.

- Aero forces from body roll are improved.

- Brake bias in car adjustment is now limited to +/- 3%

- A small tweak to the updated tire model on this car has been made that gives more grip loss when sliding at high speed.

Lotus 79

- Bump stop adjustments have been removed. Bump stops are now fixed in place at the end of full travel.

Yes , the feeling is a bit different but close to what it was , the new strenght of field balance is weird in my opinion : i started in pole my last race and ended with 14 seconds advantage on the second , my irating was quite high compared to other racers .